Milkwood: permaculture courses, skills + storieshttps://www.milkwood.net
Skills and stories for growing, designing + living like it mattersSun, 05 May 2019 23:38:19 +0000en-US
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3232Easy Peasy: Gardening for Kidshttps://www.milkwood.net/2019/05/03/easy-peasy-gardening-for-kids/
Thu, 02 May 2019 20:13:36 +0000https://www.milkwood.net/?p=43927We have a new book! Easy Peasy: Gardening for Kids is a do-it-yourself book for small people to explore the natural world around them, and grow and eat it, too.

And how beautiful are the illustrations? They are the work of Aitch – a Romanian artist working across murals, books and a huge range of other illustration projects. You can check out her work here, and here’s her instagram too.

So there we have it – thanks Gestalten for asking us to be a part of this beautiful project.

Keen for a copy? Head to your local bookstore, or online via Squishy Minniein Australia, or Amazon worldwide.

If you’re an Australian shop/cafe/toystore/plant nursery who would like to stock Easy Peasy (And seriously, why wouldn’t you?), head to the Aussie distributor Manic and they can sort you out.

And lastly a note that all the projects in Easy Peasy are designed to be completely do-able by kids, usually without any help from adults.

We hope the small people in your life enjoy it muchly. Let us know what you think of it x

]]>Elderberry Everything: wine, vinegar, medicine + morehttps://www.milkwood.net/2019/02/22/elderberry-everything-wine-vinegar-medicine-more/
Thu, 21 Feb 2019 19:01:42 +0000https://www.milkwood.net/?p=43508If you forage just one thing from the wilds (or your backyard) each year, please let it be elderberry. Free medicine, wine and dessert vinegar could all be yours. Such an incredible plant! The Elder Native to most of Europe … Continued

If you forage just one thing from the wilds (or your backyard) each year, please let it be elderberry.

Free medicine, wine and dessert vinegar could all be yours. Such an incredible plant!

The Elder

Native to most of Europe and north America, elder (Sambucus nigra) is a spindly
stemmed, fast-growing deciduous shrub that flowers wildly in spring, followed
by deep black clusters of berries. It requires fertile soils, but will grow in either
wet or dry conditions. There are many other Sambucus species that are also
known as elderberries, but Sambucus nigra is the one that is most commonly
eaten and used for medicinal purposes.

The elder is another old medicinal and beloved plant that has naturalised far beyond its native lands. It is a powerful plant that should be approached with caution as some parts of it can be toxic, particularly its larger stems, leaves and unripe berries, as well as its bark. The elder flowers and ripe berries can be gathered safely, however, and have such a special taste and beneficial attributes that learning how to deal with this lovely weed is entirely worthwhile.

Elderberries

Elderberries should only be picked when they are fully ripe. Since there are many species of elder around, do look up the one that you have nearby and check what constitutes ‘ripe’ for that species. Down the creeks of our area we have feral Sambucus nigra – the European or black elderberry – whose fruit is glossy black when fully ripe.

We gather the berries in summer and early Autumn along the creek and its hollows, returning bumped and scraped and smiling with great baskets and bags of berries.

Elderberries can be consumed in many different ways. They have been used in folk remedies as an immune booster since ancient times, and contain powerful antioxidants that aid recovery from colds and flu. Some people caution against eating the berries raw as it’s possible to have a reaction to them, however this is nullified when the berries are cooked or dried.

Processing

Removing the ripe berries from the stems can be a long-winded job, but there are workarounds. If you have a flat garden sieve with a gauge of 7 mm (1⁄4 inch) or so, you can rub the heads through it, collecting the berries in a bowl below. A fork works well too, for smaller quanities. Some people freeze the elderberry heads in a big bag, then shake the bag to make the berries easier to detach. Some just use their hands to shuck the berries from their stems.

Note that elderberries make an excellent and quite permanent dye, to
which the earthen floor in our home can attest – in large, permanent purple
blobs. The elderberries will always be with us.

Dried Berries

Drying elderberries on trays or baskets, stirred daily until they’re all dry, will yield shelf-stable dried berries that can be bottled and used in teas and also in medicinal tinctures. There’s a tincture recipe on page 286 of our book Milkwood that can be used for elderberry.

We throw a pinch of dried elderberries in pots of herbal tea, especially in the colder months – if steeped for a while, the berries give the tea a purple hue and a bonus immunity kick to whoever drinks it.

Elderberries also often make it into our WildWood Tea blend, which you can make too – a delicious snapshot of your ecosystem, in a teapot. The recipe (or approach, really) is here.

Vinegars – sweet, medicinal + sour

If you have sourced a lot of elderberries, dumping them in good quality vinegar is a great place to start. From there, you can make the most delicious dessert vinegar ever to grace your table, or medicinal brew to keep bugs at bay, all winter long.

There are many (so many) recipes and approaches for elderberry vinegars of all kinds, but here is our top three, that we use every year and highly recommend…

Elderberry Dessert Vinegar

This recipe came to us from Miles Irving’s Forager’s Handbook, and he attributes the recipe to forager-herbalist Mandy Oliver. Mind-blowingly good on spelt crepes with fresh goats cheese, or drizzled over dessert bowls of yogurt + fresh fruit. Or in salad dressings, or as part of a marinade (with our Plum Sauce – p 243 of our book in the Wild Food chapter, or here if you’re in a rush) or anywhere that needs a sweet sour woodland zing.

We do know a certain lady that swigs this direct from the bottle, but in our house it’s too precious for that. Do not be put off by the amount of sugar in this recipe! It is worth it and balances out beautifully with the other flavours. Persevere.

Our version of this uses apple cider vinegar and slightly less sugar than the original.

You will need:

Weigh your elderberries and then put them in a big pot that you don’t need for a few days. Add 500ml of vinegar for every 350g of elderberries. Make a note of how much vinegar you put in, you’ll need this later.

Stir in, put a lid on the pot, and leave for 3 days in a cool place, stirring a few times a day.

Then, drain through a sieve, or a cheesecloth , into another pot. Squeeeze out every last bit of elderberry goodness you can. You can add the elderberries to something else at this point, or your compost.

Now add the sugar, in a one-to-one ratio. So if you have 1 litre of liquid, add 1 kg of sugar. Or 5oog sugar for 500ml of liquid, and so on.

Bring the mix up to simmer, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Simmer for 10 minutes, then bottle into very clean, hot bottles, all the way to the top, and seal bottles.

Label and hide from your family for a few months to let the flavours do their thing. Use on everything, and enjoy.

Easy Elderberry Vinegar

Oooh this one is easy. And so good. Excellent in salad dressings to give tang, a medicinal kick, and both colour and texture – as the whole berries remain in the vinegar.

De-stem your fresh elderberries and add to a very clean bottle, filling it 1/2 full. Pour over your favourite vinegar (we use apple cider vinegar) to fill the bottle.

Label and store for a few months somewhere cool before using, giving it a shake if and when you think of it, during this time. That’s it! Elderberry salad vinegar. Yum.

Medicinal Elderberry Syrup

We make this medicinal syrup each year that goes away into the cupboard until winter, then comes out to treat colds and flu, with big and small bottles being distributed throughout our community as needed.

It’s not actually a syrup in the super-thick, super-sweet sense of the word, but that’s what everyone calls this medicine. And if the name makes it more palatable to cranky sick people (both big and small), then we’re all for it. Dosage is commonly a few teaspoons, a few times a day either as a preventative when cold-weather sickness feels like it’s coming on, or to aid recovery.

1. Put the elderberries, cinnamon and cloves in a large pot. Cover with the water, then bring to the boil. Take off the heat, put the lid on the pot and leave the berries to steep overnight.

2. The next day, return the pot to the stove and add the ginger. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

3. Line a colander with a clean tea towel or cheesecloth. Pour the mixture through the colander and into another pot. Squeeze the elderberries in the tea towel to extract all the liquid (Your tea towel will be purple for a month or so after this operation, but it will wash out eventually). Give the elderberry mush to your chickens or add it to your compost.

4. Bring the liquid to a simmer, then add the honey and apple cider vinegar and stir to combine. At this point, taste the mixture. If it tastes like your family will slurp it up in spoonfuls, you’re done. If not, adjust the sweetness accordingly.

5. Pour the hot syrup into hot, clean bottles. Seal, label and store in a dark place. We store the syrup in re-used red wine bottles somewhere cool and dark, and keep any opened bottles in the fridge.

TIPS

You can preserve the bottles of syrup using the water-
bath technique (see the passata recipe on page 52).

It might seem silly to boil up that honey goodness and negate the antibacterial compounds of the honey, but if the syrup is made using raw, unheated honey and then stored, it may ferment and explode. If you like, you can leave out the honey and, when administering the syrup, mix it with a little honey so you get a tasty result and allthe benefits of raw honey. Or you could just eat lots of honey, as well as this syrup, which is our preferred option.

Elderberry Wines + Liqueurs

Once again, there are so many options here. If you’re feeling advanced, go ahead and make proper elderberry wine.

Alternatively, if time is short or your equipment is minimal…

Elderberry Country Wine

Just like most other fruits and berries, you can make country wine with elderberries! Here is a blog version our recipe, or you can find the updated version in our book, p246. You may want to add a bit more honey/sugar to this recipe as elderberries aren’t as sweet as many other fruits and berries.

Wild Liqueur

The process of making wild liqueur is worth mentioning, as it’s a simple and delicious thing to have in your pantry, and at your party! It makes an excellent addition to any celebration, whether warmed and sipped in small glasses on a cold winter’s night, or poured over ice in a tall glass and served with sparkling mineral water in summer.

The short version of Wild Liqueur can be made like this:

Fill a clean jar with strong-flavoured fruits or berries – we use everything from plums to elderberries to mulberries to blackberries.

Add some spices (cinnamon, star anise and pepper are our favourites)

Add some sugar or honey if you like things sweet – 1 tablespoon of sugar per 1 litre (4 cup) jar is a good guide.

Finally, pour over enough spirits to cover the fruit, up tot he top of the jar. We usually go for the cheapest vodka we can find, but some people use gin.

Seal and store the jar in a dark place for up to 6 months or so, then strain out the fruit. At this point, either drink the liqueur or continue to store it – the flavours will continue to develop and change over time.

The flavour combinations you can add to wild liqueurs are endless. Try dandelion flower, elderflower and mint; or dandelion root, turkey tail mushrooms and blackberry. Or, straight up elderberry.

Having at least a few bottles of wild liqueur in your cupboard at all times ensures a happy life and excellent impromptu celebrations when required. If you don’t drink much (or at all) I would still recommend have a bottle or two on hand for the unexpected moments in life that call for a nip of elderberry and turkey tail liqueur.

Ok, well that’s enough to get you started! Are you already using elderberry? What do you do with yours? We love new recipes and suggestions 🙂

Various bits of this post are from the Wild Food chapter of our book Milkwood, which you can get from us in Australia (signed!), or from here if you’re further afield. As always, check your local library too! Happy foraging x

Keen to make 2019 the year you finally start keeping bees? Growing mushrooms? Begin your garden? Or maybe even take the plunge and turn your love of gardening into a livelihood? Here you go, friend.

Since launching our first book last spring, we’ve been asked if we’re still excited about running courses – and the answer is most definitely. One of our favourite things in the world is to see people get skilled up to grow, design and DO things for themselves, and their communities. It warms our hearts, and spurs us on.

Sharing skills that make a difference, and helping people find their confidence to ‘give it a go’ is our favourite thing to do.

So! Here’s what’s on offer, in NSW + VIC, this Autumn + Winter:

Intro to Natural Beekeeping

What our students say:

“This course far exceeded my high expectations. Tim Malfoy’s presentation was intensely practical and informative – suitable both for novices like me, and others who had some or lots of apiary experience. The afternoon spent with the bees, beginning to identify the amazing complexities within the hives, was reassuring and really ignited my interest. An excellent course!” – Kate L

“The day was filled with a huge amount of information—anatomy, physiology, behaviour, illnesses, why go natural and even a swarm catch. Watching hive checks, being introduced to the queen and drones was fantastic. Tim has a lifelong passion for bees that is shared generously to all who attend.” – Kieran M

Intro to Permaculture

What our students say:

“This was an extremely powerful weekend. Hearing David Holmgren speak with such grace and wit was was absolutely inspiring, and Nick’s openness and knowledge was totally encouraging. This experience reassured me that we as humans do have everything that we need to create the future that we so desperately seek, the key challenge is that it is us that needs to change first.” – Christo C

“I came with many questions and every one was answered. I have never done a course that was as interesting. Nick is a fabulous presenter.” – Brigid M

“Attending this course was the best step I have taken towards reaching my dream of starting a market garden. Olivier’s presentation was highly informative and practical as he gave us an incredible snapshot and often very humorous insight into the challenges, detailed planning, commitment and skills required to start such a venture. Three incredible days – highly recommended !” – David S

Intro to Organic Market Gardening

What our students say:

“This course was everything I was looking for and more. Olivier is possibly the best teacher I’ve come across. He is knowledgeable, friendly and is able to communicate information in a straight forward manner. I had so many ‘light bulb moments’ during the course. My biggest challenge was containing my excitement at having all this great info. Gardening gold. Can not thank Olivier enough! Truly.” – Mum of 5 living on 35 acres in central west NSW

“Attending this course was the best step I have taken towards reaching my dream of starting a market garden. Olivier’s presentation was highly informative and practical as he gave us an incredible snapshot and often very humorous insight into the challenges, detailed planning, commitment and skills required to start such a venture. Three incredible days – highly recommended !” – David S

Gourmet Mushroom Cultivation

What our students say:

“For someone who didn’t know a lot about mushroom cultivation, Nick’s course was a revelation to me. I am now confident with all the hands-on aspects to mushroom cultivation and very excited about getting my home based little mushroom farm for family consumption up and going. Thank you Nick and Heather for a fantastic weekend of information and activity. 10/10 from me.” – Jennie T

“The love and fascination Nick has for fungi is well and truely transmitted through his teaching. You leave the course with a new respect for mushrooms and their role in the world. This course has a plethora of information for anyone wanting to grow mushrooms at home or even to scale up to a small business. Nick clearly explains various processes you can use in different contexts, emphasising sustainable and earth first practices.” – Emmy K

So that’s our face-to-face courses until the middle of winter. On another front, we’re working on some online learning for you all (very exciting), which will start becoming available from July onwards. And as part of that…

Milkwood free online Q&A sessions are starting soon…

Can’t make it to a Milkwood course? We’re also starting up free monthly Q&A sessions on both our Instagram and Facebook Page (one a month each, so two a month if you’re keen).

We’re gathering subjects now, if you’d like to pitch in. All requests considered, no matter how whacky, or how technical.

Milkwood Q&A #1: Using permaculture principles in your everyday: this session will be over at our Facebook page at 8pm on Thursday, Feb 7th. We’re starting with the basics – got a question? Wondering where to begin? Join us!

Milkwood Q&A #2: Growing Mushrooms: this session will be over at our Instagram account, at 8pm on Thursday 21st Feb. If you’re mushroom-curious, or already growing some but have specific questions, join us. Complete beginners welcome. It will be a fun and fungi-filled discussion.

We’re pretty excited about starting these. Future free Q&As will cover everything from container gardening to backyard greywater projects to seaweed foraging + cooking. To stay in the loop about future Q&A topics, make sure you get our newsletter, as we’ll announce each month’s topic there.

Whew! Right. And remember, there’s also our first book , which covers how to do a bunch of awesome things, AND there’s also our blog archives which have heaps of info on everything from tying up tomatoes to DIY aquaponics systems. And all for free. So now, between all those options, you literally have no excuse to get growing, or to try something new. Good luck, and let us know how you go x

Looking for something to do these holidays? Why not get to know your local seaweeds and the ecosystems that they live in!

With our free kids seaweed guide – from us, to you.

This guide came about as a result of writing the Seaweed chapter of our first book, Milkwood. I wanted to to take kids on seaweed foraging walks as part of our book tour, and so I created this little fold-out guide with the help of our friend Brenna Quinlan, who also illustrated our book.

We’ve taken this little guide on walks from Byron Bay to Hobart, and it has been studied and approved by many little fingers. But we thought, while it’s holiday time, that we would share it with you all to get you exploring and appreciating just how special (and delicious!) seaweed is to our ecosystems.

Seaweed foraging basics

Always check if foraging is allowed, and in what quantities, before collecting. Some councils encourage it, and some prohibit it. Get your facts straight first.

Only ever collect beach-cast seaweed, that is no longer alive and has rolled in on the waves.

Never take the first piece you see! Just incase it is the last.

Use your nose and common sense when choosing which bits of seaweed to harvest. If it looks firm and fresh, great. It it’s slimy and looking a bit old, leave it.

Take a basket or bag that keeps seaweed in, but lets water and sand out.

Remember that seaweed is important to the marine ecosystem even after it is washed up on the beach, so forage mindfully and take only a bit.

Can I eat it?

Happily, in Australian waters all species of seaweeds are considered edible, though their palatability varies hugely (to our knowledge there are two species of red seaweed in western Australia that would be toxic if consumed in large quantities but other than that, you’re all good).

Once you know your local species, you can take them home, dry them on the washing line, and add them to soups and stews. Powders are great too, or there’s a fab recipe in our book for seaweed gomasio, which we sprinkle on everything.

But I’m not allowed to forage where I live…

Not to worry! There’s so much to learn and appreciate about seaweeds, even if you can’t take them home. Learn your local species, draw them, and instead get some seaweed into your kitchen by supporting amazing local seaweed forage farmers like Sea Health Products near Narooma, NSW.

Keen to learn more? There’s 60 pages about seaweed foraging, ID and cooking info in our book Milkwood, but to get you started, here’s a few guides:

Let us know how you go, what you find, and what you make with it all? We’d love to hear. Enjoy 🙂

With big love and thanks to Brenna Quinlan for the gorgeous illustrations, and to all the kiddos (and their adults) that have joined us on seaweed walks so far. May your summer be full of new adventures!

]]>A year of seaweed, jungles and campfires (and a book)https://www.milkwood.net/2018/12/17/a-year-of-seaweed-jungles-and-campfires-and-a-book/
Mon, 17 Dec 2018 04:40:09 +0000https://www.milkwood.net/?p=42773Looking back, I obviously should have gathered a lot more seaweed last winter – to feed the curious, the enthused and the yet-to be convinced who all came to our many book talks in spring. But I was in a … Continued

Looking back, I obviously should have gathered a lot more seaweed last winter – to feed the curious, the enthused and the yet-to be convinced who all came to our many book talks in spring.

But I was in a jungle at the time, side-stepping marching ants and dodging falling coconuts – which made it difficult.

twining tomatoes

Holiday viewing

Chicks rule

Survival day

Blueberries ripening

Fermented radish

January

The year started hot, and bright, with a kitchen table covered in leaking ferments – midsummer at Melliodora is a busy time of year. Twining tomatoes, picking berries, bottling radishes. Chasing baby chicks, and baby goats.

The mama goats’ milk was up, way too much for my normal 4L milking pail. I had to upsize to the big pot – which has a wide lip that the goats love to hook their hoof into while they’re on the milking stand, spilling the lot. Despite this, we made cheese to feed millions. Fetta, chèvre, labneh. The kitchen was never silent, with the sound of dripping cheese forms or labneh cloths. We all started to smell slightly goaty.

Radical Mycology with Peter McCoy

Oysters for breakfast

Daily harvest

Retrosuburbia!

The first of the painted mountain

Hawthorns are ready

February

Deep summer kicked in, as we all became deeply and utterly overloaded, but in a good way. Kindof. David + Su released RetroSuburbia, the book they’d been working on for years.

Meanwhile, Nick and I dragged ourselves through the finishing stages of our first book, Milkwood, while attempting to stay on top of growing, harvesting + preserving the considerable goodness coming out of Melliodora.

The hawthorns down the gully ripened overnight (or so it seemed to me) and we celebrated our first honey harvest from the Melliodora langstroth hives, which we’d converted to natural management the season before. Honey flowed, the painted mountain corn was nearly ready for picking, and we slept when we could.

International womens day (and more mushrooms

The small buckets are blooming

Our sink is under those tomatoes - somewhere

Cheese cave innovations

Fox turns nine

First fo the figs!

March

The thing about March, in the south of Australia, is that you know this heat, this dry, this incredible hot wind that desiccates ALL the little broccoli seedlings that you just carefully planted… it won’t last forever. Even if it feels like the heat will never end, today.

Before we know it, we’ll be celebrating rare sunny days in between cold wet weeks, and hoping we have just enough dry tinder to light the woodstove one more time, this morning. The tomatoes of March may overflow our sink and drive me nearly crazy, but it’s now, and only now, that they are here with us. It’s use it or lose it season. Preserve, or don’t have a full larder to eat from when the cold winds blow and there’s yet more rain forecast. Your choice.

So we’re thinking about firewood gathering, and stacking – even during a total fire ban, as we also clear our gutters as a bushfire safety measure. We gorge on sun ripened figs, while also sun drying them for winter school lunches. And we celebrate when we can see the sink again, because we’ve bottled all the tomatoes now. Until tomorrow, when we’ll pick the next load.

We also celebrated 9 years of parenting, as our Fox turned 9. The mushrooms sang along, there were so many of them.

Firewood gathering - band shot

Figs everywhere

Hannah of the garlic, and clean pantry

Tomtato-a-rama

Goat love

Garlic grading and planting time!

April

Our book finally headed off to the printer (YAY) and I reclaimed a tiny bit of sanity as a result. The firewood gathering expeditions ramp up, and so does the fig harvest. Hannah shows up as a surprise guest for a few days, and magically plants all our garlic and re-arranges our pantry room so that you can actually find things (thanks babe).

The tomatoes continue and the gherkin harvest kicks in for real, meaning that every crock is loaded with dill pickles. This is obviously no bad thing, as it means pickles for everyone. We distribute accordingly.

The evenings are getting earlier now, and there’s a little nip in the air some mornings. We’re watching for the first frost, to ensure we can pick all the remaining capsicums and eggplants before it happens, but the first frost doesn’t come.

Madagascar beans

That Autumn light, though

Feijoas!

Daylesford Community Garden working bee

The red soil garden, ready for winter

Mushroom foraging season

May

While Nick went to teach a Permaculture Design Certificate, I picked up a thousand, thousand feijoas from under the trees. Happily I discovered that you can definitely preserve feijoas with their skins on, so no need to peel. A great relief. The madagascar beans were rattling in their pods, ready for saving like the white and purple jewels they are.

We planted the first round of broadbeans (dwarf, black flowered) and nearly cheered when the first frost arrived. I was worried that it wouldn’t.

This important seasonal event marks the end of autumn in the garden – all summer crops out, broadbeans and final winter cover crops in. I could see the kitchen sink most days now, which was nice.

Elgaar Farm cheese christmas

Mount Gnomon Farm, Tassie

Bumi Langit, Java

The salt harvesters of Tejakula

Green school, Bali

The subak system, with the Kul Kul PDC crew

June

As the growing season slowed to a halt, we prepared for adventures. In retrospect, staying put and going to sleep for 3 months may have been the more responsible plan, but life is short, so we didn’t. I roadtripped with Brenna + Jacq + Ashar down to Cygnet in Tasmania for the annual Deep Winter farmer get together.

Welcomed by strangers and friends as we journeyed, we ate cheese like kings at Elgaar Farm, before being so well looked after by the Cygnet farming crew.

And then, the big family adventure. To teach a Permaculture Design Certificate at Kul Kul Farm in Bali, and to explore Java as a family, too.

Yay Kul Kul PDC crew!

Students presenting designs

Fresh clove flower

Bambu Indah

Cath and Nick discussing soils at Bali Ecostay

Kul Kul mushroom success!

July

The way the small birds flit down to skim the surface of the spring-fed pools, and then magically, at dusk, give way to small bats which do the same thing. The way the ants crawl across the rainforest floor, making imperial highways for a day, or a moment.

The way the smoky haze at dawn contains so much magic and yet so many challenges, as the small piles of mixed single-use plastic and traditional bamboo baskets burn as rubbish together, outside nearly every home.

So many different greens, and new beetles, and so much life. And chaos, and challenges, and traditional ways, and invasions, and clove trees, and heritage rice, and dogs, and gamelans, and shadow puppets, and smiling kids, and all the kites with their sinuous tails, in the sky from dawn till dusk. Thankyou for everything, Indonesia. It was amazing to meet you.

Tomato seedlings

Snow pea seedlings

Getting ready to send out the books...

wet and waiting for spring

The milkwood book!

Back to the frost

August

Back. Welcomed by frost, and a to-do list longer than both my arms, outstretched. There’s spring seedlings to raise, a book coming out next month, a book tour to create and schedule, workshops and talks to write, and outfits. Must find/get/borrow some book launch and talk outfits. With no dirt on them.

But the wild hive of bees in the willow tree survived winter, and the pea shoots are quickly ready to plant, and the tomato seeds sprout with a bit of extra bottom heat, and I make it down to the coast to gather seaweed, and manage dry it.

I also gather the last of the rosehips and turkeytail mushrooms down the gully, and dry them for tea. I tell myself it’s only a few book events, no big deal – and don’t belive me. I find a few outfits that don’t make me look like I’m about to do the milking, or go to bed, which is my usual wardrobe. Nick seems quite fine with it all, damn him. We get ready to go.

Kids seaweed foraging walk

Book launch!

Mushrooms for all

Community book dinner

Quite respectable cabbages

Day off

September

Sydney and Melbourne and Byron and Brisbane. Books and more books and conversations. Lashings of seaweed butter, and honeycomb, and beautiful friends, and many new questions. Finding the right signing pen! Learning to ask people to spell that please, before I ruin their title page. Learning to send out books.

Confirming that it is NOT JUST ME that thinks foraging seaweed is cool – if i were less exhausted I might have a moment’s smugness about that. An amazing seaweed dinner at Fleet. Many, many mushroom growing demonstrations.

Ashar soon learns that hanging out at all these bookshops bodes well for him getting many new books, plus booksellers just give them to him – everyone loves a reader I guess, especially when they’re nine, and wearing a swordbelt. Community book dinners, of bring-a-plate madness.

Back home, we pull the last of the cabbages, and the tomato seedlings have survived our neglect.

Talking honeybees at Buena Vista Farm

taking the goats out

Tomato seedlings for everyone (and everyone else, too)

Goatlings at Good Life Permaculture, Tassie

Congee with rough rice Adam!

Drying wakame

Cute foragers at our Hobart seaweed walk

October

Frightfully scheduled, was October. Nick was teaching a PDC, Dave + Su had lots of Retrosuburbia events to attend, and there were goats and gardens to care for, in between shooting off for our own book events. Plus that big climate change report came out. Are we doing the right thing with our days? Deep breath.

We talked bees and held honeybee high teas on farms from Gerringong to Cygnet, with people that cared. We were reminded that hope is how we roll.

On the upside, I met wakame (that’s a seaweed) for the first time, on a rockshelf south of Hobart, Tasmania. Hello, long lost friend and noxious invasive weed! Best lunch ever of congee and crazy ferments with Adam of Rough Rice. A crazy kids seaweed foraging day with snacks and sand and seaweed everything. Sitting in the sun admiring Hannah’s urban goats. Campfire potatoes on the banks of the Huon, with Michelle + Leon + Sadie + Matt.

And I even brought a cracking flu back from Tasmania with me, as a souvenir.

Milkwood/Cornersmith dinner

Jo Lane of Sea Health Products (aka The Kelp Lady)

All the broadbeans (actually so NOT all the broadbeans)

Last of the cabbages

The garlic is ready!

Elderflowers

Apollo Bay dreaming...

November

The poppies are out, and the snowpeas are snapping. We kraut the rest of the cabbages, which refused to head and are about to flower. The first gang gang cockatoos appear in the treetops, with their fuzzy heads and friendly faces. We pull up the garlic, and shell a million (no exaggeration) broadbeans.

The bees are busy. We check the hives on a warm day – all is well and the queens are laying. It might be a big honey season, this one. The elders start flowering. We’re in proper spring here, now.

In Moruya I get inspired by the crew at The Sage Project community garden, and everyone gobbles up Stuart’s seaweed gomasio pizzas. I talk seaweed and books with Fraser + Stuart, and get to visit Jo Lane’s seaweed foraging business. In Sydney there’s a Cornersmith/Milkwood dinner with tangy, foraged, delicious dishes, and I try to keep chatting to the guests throughout, though a cough from that flu is lingering.

A seaweed workshop with the gorgeous folk of Apollo Bay, and meeting more wakame in the harbour there, and bull kelp on the beaches, all around. Those southern forests have my heart, where they meet the sea.

Goats cheese for all

Best friends

Straining the milk

Fermented honey garlic

Considering corn

December

The goats’ milk is back up, after a winter of half-filled milking pails, so we’re back in the land of daily chèvre making. The red-ripe cherry trees are picked clean by wattle birds (mostly) and children clambering in the branches . The berries begin – strawberries, raspberries and red currants firstly – though the blueberries nearly have a blush on them, too.

All the tomatoes are completely and finally planted, so we start to train them up their trellises. Ashar and Vavalov (the new baby goat) become best friends.

From here, there’s a Melliodora Summer Solstice party to hold and celebrate, and then a few weeks of family time. From there, we’ll cycle back through to January – leaking ferments, overflowing sink, bottled fruit and tomatoes aplenty.

Treehouse days for Ash and his friends, as we squeak in bits of deskwork where we can. Morning harvests, hot days, and evening swims in the lake. Before we know it, we’ll soon be gathering firewood for winter.

……………

Thankyou so much to all the friends and students and other folks that supported us this year – whether it was buying our book, coming along to a talk, taking a course, commenting online or just making us a cup of tea. You’re all inspiring, and much appreciated.

We wish you peace and love and all the good things for the new year, and may you too be able to see your sink, more often than not. xx

]]>Making: Wild Fermented Elderflower Sodahttps://www.milkwood.net/2018/11/26/making-wild-fermented-elderflower-soda/
Sun, 25 Nov 2018 19:00:31 +0000https://www.milkwood.net/?p=42526It’s elderflower season, finally! The gullies + back lanes around our town are awash with their splashes of lacy whiteness, and all the goodness they bring. Starting with wild elderflower soda, our family’s favourite. And there’s so many other uses, … Continued

It’s elderflower season, finally! The gullies + back lanes around our town are awash with their splashes of lacy whiteness, and all the goodness they bring. Starting with wild elderflower soda, our family’s favourite. And there’s so many other uses, too.

But first, a little about the Elder

Native to most of Europe and north America, elder (Sambucus nigra) is a spindly stemmed, fast-growing deciduous shrub that flowers wildly in spring, followed by deep black clusters of berries. It requires fertile soils, but will grow in either wet or dry conditions. There are many other Sambucus species that are also known as elderberries, but Sambucus nigra is the one that is most commonly eaten and used for medicinal purposes.

The elder is an old medicinal and beloved plant that has naturalised far beyond its native lands. It is a powerful plant that should be approached with caution as some parts of it can be toxic, particularly its larger stems, leaves and unripe berries, as well as its bark. The elder flowers and ripe berries can be gathered safely, however, and have such a special taste and beneficial attributes that learning how to deal with this lovely weed is entirely worthwhile.

Gathering roadside elderflowers with Leon + Caroline

elderflowers

Elderflowers

Gather a big batch of the flowers in spring (right now!) and remove them from their larger stems, then proceed into elderflower everything. You can dry the elderflowers on paper or on a fine mesh rack, to use in drinks and herbal teas, and to sprinkle on salads and cakes.

Elderflowers also make an amazing cordial that is fantastic on a hot day, diluted with mineral water and served with fresh mint. You can never make too much of this!

Wild Fermented Elderflower Soda

This is a spring recipe that we love. It’s family-friendly and entirely delicious as an afternoon treat. The fizz comes from whey and the copious yeasts in the elderflower pollen.

Because there is so much fermentation potential in this recipe in the form of pollen yeasts, it ferments very quickly, before all the sugars are consumed and the alcohol content rises. This means everyone can drink it, not just the big people in your household!

You will need:

2–3 elderflower floret heads

1.5 litres (6 cups) unchlorinated water

1 heaped tablespoon light, raw honey

3 tablespoons whey (the clear liquid sitting on the top of plain yoghurt will do)

Method:

1. Remove the large stems from the elderflower heads with scissors. Some people remove all the stems, but we don’t bother.

2. Fill a 2 litre (8 cup) jar three-quarters full with the water and add the honey, stirring to dissolve. Add the whey and then the elderflowers, stirring them all around.

3. Place the uncapped jar somewhere warm, where you will pass it multiple times a day. Lightly cover the top with a cloth to prevent critters getting in. Whenever you pass the jar, give it a stir to submerge the elderflowers – they will whirl around and then rise back to the top.

4. Within 2–6 days, depending on room temperature and the wild yeasts in the elderflower, the mixture will start to bubble. Taste it and see if it’s fizzy yet. If yes, ta da – you’ve made elderflower soda. If no, leave it a little longer. Once it’s done, strain off the solids.

5. Now you have a decision to make. You can bottle and chill the soda, which will have a very light fizz, or you can bottle it in swing-top glass bottles or plastic bottles and leave them on your kitchen bench to let the fizz build for a day or two.

The pressure will build up, so be careful when you open the bottles. When it’s as fizzy as you like it, chill the soda to halt fermentation and drink it within a day or so. Cheers.

Tips…

The longer you leave the soda to ferment, the drier it will taste as the yeasts eat all the sugars. It will also become more fizzy, slightly alchoholic and potentially explosive when opened, so be careful.

We prefer to make this soda fresh in small batches, and drink it with a light fizz. If you’d like to add a little fresh mint or lemon balm at the bottling stage, go for it.

This basic recipe can be used to make all kinds of wild fermented fruit sodas. We’ve made blackberry, rhubarb, peach, nectarine, apple and more. You can also ‘backslop’ some liquid from one batch to the next to help get the fermentation started. There’s a whole world of sweet, fizzy DIY sodas to discover – experiment and enjoy.

If you can’t get hold of whey, a tiny pinch of champagne yeast or normal bakers’ yeast will have a similar effect. Or you can leave it out – the elderflowers and the honey will create their own ferment in time, it will just take a little longer and possibly be a bit more alcoholic.

The above is an extract from the Wild Food chapter of our new book Milkwood – real skills for down to earth living. You can buy a signed copy from us, or hit your local bookstore or library! Overseas folks, go here.

]]>Beeswax DIY: making beeswax wraps + how to render your own waxhttps://www.milkwood.net/2018/11/19/beeswax-diy-making-beeswax-wraps-how-to-render-your-own-wax/
Sun, 18 Nov 2018 22:29:01 +0000https://www.milkwood.net/?p=42450Beeswax is one of our favourite gifts from the hive – and perfect for making your own beeswax wraps. At this gifting time of year, no-waste, home made presents make all the sense in the world – so here’s how … Continued

Beeswax is one of our favourite gifts from the hive – and perfect for making your own beeswax wraps. At this gifting time of year, no-waste, home made presents make all the sense in the world – so here’s how to make them.

And how to render your raw beeswax down too, if you’re lucky enough to have a hive or can get hold of a friend’s many leftovers! Alternatively you can cheat this step and buy some beeswax, that’s fine too.

Healthy brood in a recently swarm-populated warré hive

10 things to do with your Beeswax 3

Beeswax is something the bees make themselves, from their own bodies. It’s incredible stuff, and deserves to be used to make beautiful and truly useful things. You can use beeswax in cooking and to make medicines and balms, candles and soaps, and, of course, no-plastic lunch wraps.

Beeswax is also great for plugging shiitake logs, keeping wooden furniture glistening and whole, and a thousand other uses.

We’re going to dive straight into beeswax wrap making, then discuss how to render wax from your hive – because not as many folks get to do the rendering bit! But if this IS you, and you’ve just harvested from your top bar hive and have a wonderful sticky mess of wax to process, scroll down and check out the rendering directions first.

Buying beeswax…

If you’re buying beeswax, try to keep it as local as possible! Many Australian beekeepers sell beeswax in bulk – hop online and see what you can find. Candle making and craft shops will also stock beeswax in blocks or often pellets.

But a note here: beeswax stores whatever toxins enter the hive. This includes chemicals used in hive maintenance, and environmental ones also. So get the cleanest wax you can find for projects like beeswax wraps, which you’re going to wrap your food in. Some places sell ‘organic food grade’ beeswax, and you can take this option if you like, though it can be expensive. When we need extra beeswax, we opt to buy from a beekeeper that we know doesn’t use chemical treatments in their hives.

If you’re not sure which wax to choose, stick with Australian beeswax as a minimum, rather than going off-shore where safety and chemical standards of beekeeping may not be great. Or, best case scenario, start natural beekeeping and don’t use any chemicals at all, ensuring the purity of your home-sourced wax. The bees will thank you.

10 things to do with your Beeswax 5

Home-made beeswax wraps

Making beewax wraps

Every kitchen should be full of these re-usable wraps. Use them in place of plastic wrap, but also to wrap bread and vegetables to keep them fresh. Beeswax wraps are washable and can be used again and again.

Clean them with cold water and gentle soap as necessary, but we usually just rinse them in water and hang them up to dry. When the wax wears out, the wraps can be re-infused.

You will need:

Thin cotton cloth of various sizes

A hand grater

Beeswax

Metal baking trays

Jojoba oil

A wide paintbrush

Pegs and a drying line

1. Cut the cotton cloth into squares or rectangles of your preferred size – we make them from 15 cm (6 inches) wide to about 40 cm (16 inches) wide.

3. Place a cotton square on a baking tray and sprinkle it with some drops of jojoba oil, then sparsely sprinkle the grated beeswax over the top, all the way to the edges. Less is more – if the wax is too thick, the cloth won’t be able to absorb it all.

4. Place the tray in your warm oven and watch closely – remove it as soon as the grated wax has melted, about 5 minutes at most. Use the paintbrush to ensure the whole cloth is covered with the melted wax, all the way to the edges.

5. Pick up the wax-covered wrap and peg it on a line until cool and dry. Repeat, repeat and repeat until you’ve used all your wax. If there’s excess wax on the baking tray, just press the next cloth into it to absorb it, and reduce the amount of grated wax you add.

Tips…

Use scraps of cotton fabric, old skirts or pillowcases to make the wraps.

Choose a paintbrush that you’re happy to get wax on, because you won’t get it off again!

The jojoba oil helps the wax to spread evenly through the cloth. An eye dropper is useful for sprinkling the oil.

When you’ve finished making wraps, scrape any excess wax from your baking trays and add it to your spare wax supply.

Rendering beeswax from a natural hive…

Here’s how we do it. Keep in mind this is beeswax coming out of a warré hive, so full comb harvesting with the honey squished out (more on the harvesting process here)…

Once the honey is removed from the comb, you are left with gorgeous, sticky beeswax, which can be cleaned and used. Beeswax is incredibly useful stuff and represents an enormous amount of care and energy from the hive. It should be processed just as carefully as your honey.

straining the comb

Processing beeswax

When your beeswax has had all the honey strained out of it, it’s ready to render down into pure wax. Rendering is the process of removing the non-wax materials with which the bees have lined the walls of their comb cells, along with any last skerricks of honey.

The first step is to get the remaining honey out of your wax. Luckily, honey is water soluble, so this part is easy – plus you can make mead and other drinks from the left-over honey-infused water (see page 170). Dump all the waxy bits in a clean bucket and break them up into small chunks, then cover it with clean water that is double the depth of the wax. Use unchlorinated water if you plan to use the wash water for making honey- flavoured drinks (which you definitely should do).

Using your hands, swish all the water around and rub the chunks of wax together to release the remaining honey. Once the wax no longer feels sticky, pour this mixture through a fine sieve or a piece of muslin (cheesecloth) and reserve the sweet water for making tasty things. The wax in the sieve is now ready for rendering.

Rendering beeswax

The basic process of rendering involves heating the wax (gently, so that it doesn’t burn) on the stovetop or in the sun until it is completely liquid. Then you simply strain out the bits, leaving behind golden, pure beeswax to set into a block.

Beeswax is very difficult to get off utensils and pots, so consider making a beeswax processing kit with all the bits you’ll need to use over and over again. We buy everything we need from local op shops or thrift stores.

Stovetop method

Place the wax chunks in the top of a double-boiler arrangement. Either use an actual double boiler or use a big pot of water with a smaller pot sitting snugly inside (but not touching the bottom), with the water coming up the side of the smaller pot.

Heat slowly until the wax is completely liquefied, then pour the wax through a sieve lined with paper towel (or cheesecloth, or very fine mesh, or… ) into your mould of choice. This is the messy part, so make sure you’ve got everything you need on hand before you begin.

Solar method

This method is the most fun method and uses the least energy. It’s also the least messy as everything happens outside, in one container. Get a 5 litre (1.3 gallon) bucket and a styrofoam box (or an insulated cooler) that can comfortably hold the bucket. You’ll also need a sheet of glass or perspex to place on top of the box, a sieve that will sit in the bucket and a piece of paper towel or cheesecloth.

Place the bucket in the cooler box, with about 2.5 cm (1 inch) of water in the bottom. Line the sieve with the towel/cheesecloth and place it on top of the bucket, then place your wax in the sieve. Put the glass or perspex on top, and place outside in a sunny spot.

Over the course of a hot day, this method should render as much wax as the sieve can hold into a nice round block of clean beeswax inside the bucket. You can tilt the box towards the sun throughout the day and prop it up with a brick or chunk of wood.

The water in the bottom of the bucket will help to dissolve any remaining particles of honey, and also makes it easier to pop the block out at the end of the process as the block of wax will float on top.

Variations on this theme include creating a DIY solar wax melter (perhaps like the one shown above, which is what we use at home) or using an existing solar cooker.

Slum Gum – also useful!

The blackish goop that’s left in the sieve after the wax has been rendered is known as ‘slum gum’, and it’s amazing, too. Roll it into lozenges for the best- ever firelighters, or store it to place inside bait hives in spring – it’s great for attracting swarms.

]]>The Right to Roam: tips for first-time foragershttps://www.milkwood.net/2018/11/06/the-right-to-roam-tips-for-first-time-foragers/
Tue, 06 Nov 2018 05:17:17 +0000https://www.milkwood.net/?p=42298The food is all around us. It’s under our feet, along the path edges and next to the highway. It’s in the sand dunes, all over our favourite park and down nearly every back lane. There’s food out the back … Continued

The food is all around us. It’s under our feet, along the path edges and next to the highway. It’s in the sand dunes, all over our favourite park and down nearly every back lane. There’s food out the back of the doctor’s surgery, hanging over the fence. It’s even between the cracks in the bricks of our patio. We just need to learn how to see it.

Foraging for weeds, wild food and feral fruit is a simple art and a pleasure that’s available to absolutely anyone. You don’t need a backyard, or a garden, or a farm – you can live in a high-rise apartment and still become a competent forager.

All we need is a willingness to learn, good information and the eyes to see.

Foraging connects us with the world, and with each other, in many different ways. Pattern recognition takes up a large part of the human brain. Traditionally, learning and knowing the patterns of which leaves and berries to eat and which ones to leave alone was central to life (quite literally).

Once you know what you’re doing, thanks to our capacity for recognising and remembering patterns, telling the difference between nettle and fat hen, or spotting a plum tree at a distance becomes as obvious as looking at a tomato.

That is clearly a tomato, we think. I know it has no poisonous close lookalikes, so I can happily eat this tomato without asking or checking with anyone, for I know that it is a tomato. It’s the same with foraging, once you get the hang of it.

Children are pattern engines of the most focused kind: this is different from that; this goes with this one, not with that one. As parents and carers, we have a huge influence on what patterns children learn from an early age. Foraging as a family gives kids the chance to use their clear-eyed abilities for pattern recognition to build life-long skills – this is a nettle; that is a dock leaf; that tree is a plum, this one is not.

These skills will help nourish them in a very different way to learning the faces of Thomas the Tank Engine and all his friends. Take your kids with you when you go foraging and learn to see your local ’hood differently, together.

My family spent many summers in the back gullies of the Lithgow valley, where my mum was raised. Ruins of old shacks and houses from the early coalmining days are everywhere, now slowly being reclaimed by the Australian bush. These gullies were (and still are) peppered with feral fruit trees of European origin, both old and new. Some mark where a small home once stood and some are the result of birds dropping seeds.

The bounty of these gullies can be immense, so each summer and autumn we’d load up the car with buckets, baskets and bags, and go out hunting. We had staked out the trees by noticing their blossoms in the spring, as Mum knew (mostly) by the flowers which were apples, plums, pears and all the rest. We’d make a note and then check back in late summer.

Sometimes the harvest was small and sometimes it was huge. Pears and nectarines and apples for days – so much preserving! It was free feral fruiting, a family exercise that meant we spent a bunch of time helping and talking to each other as we picked.

Foraging around where you live, or in a place that you visit often, also embeds you in a place like few other activities can. A map grows in your head of your local park, gully, headland or railway easement, with points of reference that are different from how you would usually see the local environment.

The patch of wild fennel, the boggy ground where the dock grows, the salty soak where there’s always some samphire, that plum tree down near the bridge by the railway that fruits just before midsummer. It’s a map of belonging, drawn with lines of food, seasonality and small discoveries of knowledge, collected over time.

Foraging is a connection to land of the first, and possibly best, kind.

Foraging also connects our palates with our local terroir like few other foods we have access to. It allows us to source local, seasonal food with zero food miles and removes many of the unknowns about how that food was produced. We know what we’re eating and what it took to get these greens, these apples, this fennel from where they grew and into our kitchen. And that is a very good thing.

So foraging is the story of us, as a people, as a species. Long before we cultivated land and kept animals, we foraged. And still, up until the last generations, we continued to forage, regardless of what was growing in our fields, because wild food is always different and it’s vital. Different soil, different nutrients, different medicine – all good things to bring into our homes.

Our ancestors knew this, and we can learn to remember.

The right to roam (or not)

In some countries, the importance of, and therefore the rights for, all to forage are enshrined in law. Sweden has Allemansrätten – the right of public access – which allows anyone to collect wild food and flowers from the forest (excluding any protected species), regardless of who technically owns that forest. Scotland has the ‘right to roam’ law, which allows anyone to use land, public or private, for recreation or to gather wild foods for personal use. Both laws require foragers to not destroy or disrupt any vegetation in the process.

In some other countries, the laws are the opposite. It depends where you live, as well as where and what you’re hunting for. Sometimes it’s considered trespassing, sometimes it’s not.

And then there are all the other spaces – the nectarine tree growing by the railway siding, the dandelion in the spare lot by the bus stop, the fruit trees down the gully, the fennel by the highway. Use your head and your common sense. Be safe, be careful and find out what you need to know about where you want to look.

Always keep your eyes sharp for new plants, wherever you are. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll find.

Basic Foraging Guidelines

No matter what you’re gathering and where you’re gathering it from, ethical foraging comes with certain responsibilities and considerations.

Always leave the first one you see

Whether its a dandelion, seaweed or a branch of wild plums, never take the first one you see – just in case it is also the last one.

This is a great first rule for mindful foraging – it kickstarts your restraint from the beginning, right when you’re super excited to have FINALLY found what you seek. Go easy, go slow, and be aware. The gifts of the wild are there for all – you, the other animals, and the other foragers, too.

Harvest leaf and fruit, not the whole plant

Being careful not to damage the plant you’re foraging from is paramount. This ensures it’s a resource for those who come after you, as well as ensuring that the plant continues to be healthy for whatever purpose it’s growing there.

Observe and interact

As well as being a core permaculture principle, ‘observe and interact’ is good advice for foragers. Do you definitely know what species it is? Does the plant look healthy? Is it in an area that’s likely to be sprayed by the council? If urban, is it in a heavy foot traffic and dog-walking (and therefore dog-pooing) area? These are all good questions to ask.

Consider the inputs around the plant

Many councils spray their roadside and parkland weeds and unwanted plants with herbicides to control their growth, despite the damage these chemicals do to many parts of the ecosystem. You can usually find out where and when this has occurred from your local council, and it’s a good thing to consider before you go foraging. Streams are also worth looking into – if there’s heavy industry upstream, which might contribute to significant heavy metal loadings in vegetation, it’s best not to eat the greens that you find there.

Likewise, in country areas, try to find out what went on in the past. Most times it will be completely fine, but occasionally it won’t be. We once found a great crop of nettles down by the woolshed and were happily eating them until someone mentioned that was right where the old sheep dip used to be, where the sheep were dunked in chemicals twice a year, meaning a very nasty toxin loading in the soil around that area. We stopped eating them and found another good patch of nettles in an open paddock up the hill.

As wild food lovers, we’re happy to take our educated chances on eating what we find – you soon get to know what kind of areas are likely to be clean. The alternative is often eating fruit and vegetables that have been grown far away and had questionable inputs applied during growing or harvesting to prevent spoilage. We’ll take the weeds and random feral fruit, thanks!

Public vs private land

Going into someone’s yard or farm to pick fruit or anything else without asking is not okay, of course. But a fruit tree branch overhanging a public laneway is generally considered (by us and many others) to be fair game. Public parks and gullies offer little problems for foraging, as do headlands, public reserves and roadsides.

The art of asking

If you’ve found an amazing lemon, apple or persimmon tree that’s technically on someone’s block but seems to not be being picked, go and ask if you may. You’ll be surprised how often you get permission. A big jar of home-made jam or preserves, returned to the owner, often seals the deal for next year’s access – be brave!

Sometimes it’s a case of being prepared to ask forgiveness rather than permission, such as in the case of crown land, like in the gullies of Lithgow. Or at an abandoned farmhouse that has a beautiful big mulberry tree alongside, with no one around to ask permission. If you’re respectful in your attitude and in your harvesting, leaving everything as it was except for the fruit now in your basket, sometimes that’s the best you can do.

If in doubt, go without

For fruits like apples and plums, there may be little doubt with identification – we’re so familiar with these plants from the supermarket, media and our own backyards. However, for some wild plants and fungi, the forms of branch, leaf, fruit and berry may not be so recognisable.
If you find something that you ‘think you’ve been told is edible but can’t remember if this is the one’, it’s a good idea to pick a bit, take it home (uneaten) and do your research with the plant or fruit beside you. If you were right, oh, happy day. If you were wrong, it’s just as happy a day that you didn’t eat it.

There are some great pocket reference guides for weeds and wild food, so find one that covers the species you’re likely to find. If you live in Australia, take particular note that many of our indigenous fungi are not well researched when it comes to edibility. Species can look like a common edible European mushroom when they are not. Go gently, take care, observe, test, confirm, and only then, taste.

Only take what you need

If the plum tree you’ve found down the gully is full of ripe plums, it doesn’t mean you need to harvest 12 buckets if you will, in fact, only use three. Harvest three buckets instead and tell your friends where the tree is. Consider also that you may not be the only forager of this tree.

Resources held in common good on common ground should be treated as just that – a common resource, not just for you. Leaving plums on the tree is not wasting them. It’s allowing for other possibilities, outside your small reckoning. Use what you harvest and use every bit. This is gratitude, and ethical foraging.

]]>Growing Great Tomatoes: Planting ’em Outhttps://www.milkwood.net/2018/10/11/growing-great-tomatoes-planting-em-out/
Thu, 11 Oct 2018 00:01:25 +0000https://www.milkwood.net/?p=42026Growing great tomatoes is a skill available to just about anyone. But there are a few tricks to getting things right, including the planting out stage. So grab your tomato seedlings, sit down and do a bit of planning before … Continued

Growing great tomatoes is a skill available to just about anyone. But there are a few tricks to getting things right, including the planting out stage. So grab your tomato seedlings, sit down and do a bit of planning before you plant.

Preparing your tomato beds, from planning to soil preparation to mulching to trellising, may seem like a big job the first time around. But once you’ve had a season of plentiful tomatoes and filled your pantry with sauces and preserves, you’ll realise it was all worthwhile.

Planning

The first step to planting out your tomatoes is planning. Are you looking at planting them in a block or in a row? How far apart are you going to plant them? What are you going to use for your trellis?

Determinate tomatoes may be best planted in a block because when it’s time to harvest, you’ll be accessing them over a short period of time, all at once. You can therefore fit more plants into your growing space by reducing the number of paths between them.

Indeterminate tomatoes, on the other hand, will be harvested over a longer period of time, so access to these plants is paramount. Planting them in rows, with good access between each row, makes good sense.

Above are two planting plans for a 1.5 x 2 metre (4 3⁄4 x 6 1⁄2 foot) garden bed – the left one is for red pear and cherry tomatoes (indeterminate) and the right one is for roma (plum) tomatoes (determinate).

Soil preparation

Like most vegetables, tomatoes like fertile, well-drained and slightly acid soil, with a pH between 6 and 7.

If a pH test shows that your soil is less than 6 (too acidic), you can add some agricultural lime to ‘sweeten’ the soil, following the instructions in the pH test kit. You can also try using a little wood ash, but be careful not to overdo it.

If your soil’s pH is over 7 (alkaline), you can add some sulphur or decomposed pine needles or leaf litter to help bring the pH down. Here’s how to do a pH test.

The best way to establish a good soil pH long term is usually with the addition of good compost and green manure plants in your garden bed rotation, and ensuring that your soil is well drained.

Since tomatoes are heavy feeders, your soil preparation will need to include the addition of compost – preferably home-made or locally sourced. Your bed preparation also needs to ensure the soil is well aerated, so that it has good drainage, and so that plenty of soil life can establish. The addition of well- rotted cow, sheep or horse manure is welcome at this stage also, if available.

There are many, many ways to prepare a garden bed for tomatoes. The choice depends on how you want to do it, as well as what tools and resources you have available. Two options worth considering are the no-dig method, or the biointensive double-dig method.

No-dig method

If you’re wanting to establish a new garden bed on compacted ground, have plenty of organic materials available and don’t like digging, a no-dig garden bed is a great way to get started.

This bed-making method involves making a deep ‘lasagne’ of straw, carbon-rich material, compost and liquid nutrients, then planting seedlings, with a handful of compost beneath them, into that lasagne.

It’s a bit like making a compost pile, in situ. You may not get your best yields in the first year as the bedding material takes a while to break down into soil, but if you have lots of materials and not much time, this method can work a treat.

Biointensive double-dig method

The double-dig method is a way of thoroughly aerating the soil to create a cake-like consistency and incorporating large amounts of compost as you do it. It takes a bunch of effort but it only uses minimal inputs: your labour and some compost.

Double digging is a good method for regenerating existing garden beds or establishing new beds on good soil. Once it’s done, if you take good care of the garden bed you won’t need to repeat the whole process every year.

This bed-making method is done by shovelling out rows of topsoil, then loosening the subsoil below with a garden fork before replacing the top layer with topsoil from the next row, mixed with compost. Once you reach the end of the bed, you need to rake it flat. The beauty of this method is that the plants have maximum access to nutrients and water as their roots can reach deep into the soil.

Mulching

Whichever way you prepare your tomato beds, mulching them to keep the moisture in and to reduce weed seed germination is highly advised. Mulching before you plant your tomato seedlings is the most time-efficient way to do it, rather than trying to mulch around your precious plants, which can result in them getting battered or broken.

Straw or similar waste products like sugarcane mulch (bagasse) are good choices as they’ll be relatively weed-free. Mulching thickly ensures minimal evaporation and maximum weed control for your precious tomatoes.

Trellising

You’ll need a strong trellis for your rows of climbing tomatoes. Trellising is generally easiest to do after you’ve done your soil preparation and mulching, but before planting.

Here are some low-cost options for getting the strength and height you need for great tomatoes.

tying a bowline knot

twining tied tomatoes up the line

Overhead beam and twine

Take two long metal fence posts (check your local tip shop – there are often some there) and hammer them into the soil every 3 metres (9 3⁄4 feet) along each row. Then find some good long poles, such as saplings, bamboo or timber, and secure one to each metal picket with wire. (Alternatively, you can make sturdy wooden A-frames every 3 metres to do this same job, but they will take up more bed space.)

At the 2 metre (6 1⁄2 foot) high mark, secure horizontal poles along the row, overlapping them if necessary. Plant your tomatoes beneath each overhead pole in a row.

Once the tomato plants are about 30 cm (12 inches) high, get some very sturdy string – a fully laden and nearly ripe tomato vine crashing to earth because its twine has rotted is a very sad thing! Cut a length of the string, allowing some leeway (if you’re using jute or natural materials, consider double- or triple-folding it to ensure it lasts). Starting at the bottom, tie a bowline knot around the tomato stem, under the lowest branch.

Once the knot is secure, tie off the string at the overhead bar of your trellis. The string should be taut but not so tight that it damages the plant.

As your tomatoes grow, gently twine the central stem around the vertical string – always in the same direction – to keep the plants growing tall and proud. Check them every few days to see if they need a little more twining.

When the growth of your plants get more vigorous, maintaining a consistent central stem – the ‘leader’ – can get confusing, as the tomato sends out shoots every which way. This is where pruning can help (see page 38).

Mesh trellis

Another option is to use a solid mesh trellis that either hangs from an overhead bar or is held up by vertical poles. If you’re planting a lot of climbing tomatoes, the stronger the mesh material is, the better.

Wire fencing mesh with wide holes is a great option, as you can twine the tomatoes back and forth through it and you can use it for many years. Go check your local tip shop, they may have just what you need. Also ask around as see if a friend has some in their shed that you can use.

The holes need to be wide enough to twine your plants through – we recommend a minimum size of 10 x 10 cm (4 x 4 inches). Rebar (the steel reinforcing mesh that is used in concrete slabs) is another great option as it’s sturdy, with wide gaps.

You can still use mesh that has smaller holes, but you’ll need to tie up your tomatoes as they climb, keeping them on one side of the mesh. Mesh trellises can also be made and/or woven using bamboo, split wood or any strong, sturdy yet flexible material you have available.

Stakes

Stakes are best suited to semi-determinate or determinate tomatoes. Hammer them into the ground just before planting your seedlings. As the plants grow, tie them to the stakes to provide some structure and airflow.

Cages

There are lots of metal tomato cage designs that you can buy from garden shops to prop up your tomato plants. They’re best suited to semi-determinate or determinate tomatoes, which won’t grow too high. You can also make your own cages with bamboo, in a square or pyramid shape.

Time to plant

To plant your seedlings, use a garden trowel to make a hole in the mulch that’s about 15 cm (6 inches) wide and one and a half times as deep as the pot. Repeat for each tomato plant, spacing them according to your planting plan.

Gently turn the pot upside down, with the seedling between your fingers and your hand flat against the surface of the soil, and remove from the pot.

Plant your tomatoes deep, covering at least the bottom sets of leaves if you can. These nodes will magically transform into roots as the tomato senses they have been buried. The more roots for your tomato plant, the better access it has to nutrients and water.

Press the garden bed soil in around your little seedling and water it in with some diluted liquid fertiliser – we use home-made seaweed fertilizer.

Make sure you leave some space in the mulch around the seedling to allow for good airflow… and your tomatoes are in!

Also, in a few weeks we’re running our annual Biointensive Growing courses with Jodi Roebuck – you can choose from one weekend at our place in Hepburn VIC, or one weekend at Pocket City Farms in Sydney.

]]>Natural Beekeeping: a Principles Based Approachhttps://www.milkwood.net/2018/09/30/natural-beekeeping-a-principles-based-approach/
Sun, 30 Sep 2018 00:30:31 +0000https://www.milkwood.net/?p=41773Chapter three in Milkwood is all about Natural Beekeeping, and how you can use a principles-based approach to keep bees at home, safe and well, in a range of hive designs. But why natural beekeeping? Why not just keep bees in … Continued

Chapter three in Milkwood is all about Natural Beekeeping, and how you can use a principles-based approach to keep bees at home, safe and well, in a range of hive designs.

But why natural beekeeping? Why not just keep bees in the ‘normal’ way? Well, from our perspective, and the perspective of a growing number of natural beekeepers worldwide, for some very good reasons….

“…The future for honeybees is uncertain. Between various bee diseases that have spread worldwide, environmental pesticide use, mismanagement and habitat loss, bee populations in many parts of the world are strung-out and struggling. Keeping bees on a small scale in a naturally bee-centric way with minimal intervention, and putting colony health first before a honey yield, can help greatly.

As Simon Buxton, beekeeper and author, said, ‘The future of bees is not in one beekeeper with 60,000 hives, but with 60,000 people keeping one hive each…’

The hive in it's natural state - illustration by Brenna Quinlan

A wild hive in a dead tree, central west NSW

The hive in its natural state

When wild bees are seeking a new home, they’ll look for a protected space with a small entranceway and a large, preferably well-insulated, internal cavity. Often this is a tree hollow or a rock crevice, but it can be anything from a letterbox to a roof cavity. The bees will work with what they can find.

In a typical tree hollow, the bees will first clean out all undesirable material. They will then proceed to start drawing long, vertical comb from the top of the cavity for their queen to lay into, storing honey around the central ‘brood nest’ of cells containing baby bees. They plug and cover the walls of the cavity with propolis, an antibacterial and highly medicinal substance that they make from collected tree resins.

When the bees feel a comb is getting too big to be stable, it will be cross-braced in whatever way they see fit, which creates the amazing crenelated patterns we see in wild comb hives. Holes and peripheral galleries are created wherever needed to allow movement between combs.

As the queen lays successive generations of brood, each one below the previous generation, the generation in the cells above hatches. Once each newly hatched bee vacates its cell, that cell is immediately packed with pollen to support and feed the brood below. When that pollen is eaten, the cell is packed with honey and then capped. In this way, the pattern continues – a descending brood nest enclosed by a wreath of pollen, topped by a growing dome of capped honey.

The bees will continue this pattern until the end of the season, when it becomes too cold to fly. They then stay inside the hive, tending the remaining brood, eating their honey stores and keeping their core temperature stable until spring. In warmer climates, honeybees may not go broodless nor stop flying over winter, but instead maintain a smaller brood, which expands again in spring.

Natural Beekeeping: a bee-centric approach

Simply put, natural beekeeping is the practice of managing a bee colony as a whole, in a tree hollow or, more often, a simulated tree hollow.

The term ‘natural beekeeping’ is, however, an oxymoron in some ways – in the same way that ‘keeping’ any wild thing is. The act of hands-on stewardship means that the organism (or super-organism) is no longer completely wild or in its natural state.

Honeybees are wild creatures in a super-organism form. They are neither pets nor livestock. Unless disabled or prevented, they will do as they choose, each and every time. The trick to natural beekeeping is learning to work with the bees for a mutually excellent result.

So the term ‘natural beekeeping’ is really a term of comparison. In relation to conventional beekeeping practice, in which the hive design and management techniques are aimed at maximising honey harvest for the beekeeper, the super-organism of the bee colony is broken into pieces, and cannot operate as a whole. Natural beekeeping, which keeps the super-organism intact, aims to put the bees needs first, and honey harvests second.

There are many beekeeping traditions across the world that strive to keep bees in a way that honours and respects their wildness and keeps the colony intact, while still enabling a honey harvest. And harvesting is really the crux of the issue here – finding a way, through good hive design and management, to harvest with minimal disturbance or manipulation of the colony. In this way, the bees can live on, from year to year, happy and healthy in the space we’ve provided for it.

The Warre Hive

Natural Beehives across the world

Choosing a hive design…

As a beginner beekeeper, it’s very easy to get confused about different hive designs, management techniques, plastic inserts, taps, queen excluders and all the rest.

If you’re interested in keeping bees in a way that puts the bees’ needs first (which doesn’t necessarily mean a lessened harvest, because healthy bees are productive bees), start by doing a bit of research, and consider a principles-based approach.

Natural beekeeping principles encompass the basics of what bees need to thrive, and so they’re excellent principles to guide a beginner natural beekeeper. With proper care and attention, these principles can be applied to a range of different hive designs.

Some hives used in natural beekeeping are box hives, kept in a vertical stacked format. There are also various horizontal hives that mimic a horizontal tree hollow. And there are actual log hives, and neo-skep hives… and so many others. For the purposes of this book, we’ve used the Warré hive (the one made by the French monk Emile Warré) as the default hive design. It’s a vertical box hive that has top bars in each box. There’s a rundown of this hive design on pages 148–149.

Once you get your head around the fundamentals of what bees need to be healthy, you can make your choices accordingly, and get hold of (or make) a hive and gear that’s right for you, your context and the bees.

A warré box full of natural comb that the bees are in the process of drawing

Tim Malfroy inspecting a natural comb

Natural Beekeeping Principles

These principles can be applied to a range of countries and contexts. They include the essentials of what a honeybee colony needs to thrive and create long-term resilience for bees as a species, and for us, too.

Natural comb

Allowing bees to build their own comb is essential for long-term colony health. Natural comb is literally made of bee. The bees secrete flakes of wax from the underside of their abdomens and then shape it into cells in a collective construction operation, and these cells are then used successively to harbour babies, pollen and honey. Classed as part of the super-organism, the comb is the bees’ womb, home and larder. The bees vary their comb’s cell size according to their needs (drone cells need to be bigger, for example), and draw comb at different speeds and sizes, according to the season’s attributes.

By drawing their own comb, rather than being forced to use plastic, pre- made or re-used comb, the bees can ensure that the queen is always laying into fresh, virgin comb, which makes a big difference to colony health. The wax comb is lipophilic, and like the fat stores of any organism, accumulates any toxins that the bees come into contact with, building up over time as the bees work that comb. This is part of the reason that comb renewal is so important.

Comb renewal

Comb renewal happens naturally in a wild hive. When the bees deem a comb to be old or contaminated, they will cut it out and either dump it at the bottom of the cavity or fly it out the front of the hive and drop it there. In conventional beekeeping, the bees don’t have this option. They’re stuck with the fixed comb they’re given, and must re-use it as many times as the beekeeper sees fit – both for brood and honey storage.

In natural beekeeping, facilitating comb renewal is paramount. Having your bees cycle through fresh comb cleanses the hive, drastically limits toxin build-up (both for the baby bees and in the honey that you eat) and means the hive is as healthy as it can be, even in the face of widespread environmental chemical use.

Comb renewal can be helped along by providing ongoing space beneath the colony, allowing the bees to continue to draw new comb downwards. This beekeeping process is called ‘nadiring’ – placing an empty hive box under the existing colony, which gives the colony space to grow with minimal disruption. In this way, the colony can draw comb endlessly downwards. And excess honey can be harvested periodically from the top box, at the top of the honey dome, with minimal disturbance to the hive.

The comb renewal process is also helped along by the fact that in natural beekeeping, the whole honeycomb is harvested – this ‘flushing’ effect further limits disease and toxin build-up, as no old comb is returned to the hive.

Natural reproduction: swarming and re-queening

In terms of a honeybee colony, natural reproduction happens on two levels. The first is reproduction of the super-organism as a whole, when the colony splits via swarming. Swarming is an optimistic act in which a colony chooses to split in half to reproduce itself. The existing queen flies out with the swarm, while a portion of the colony stays behind with a new queen. Often bees will swarm if environmental indicators point to a good season ahead. Sometimes a hive will swarm because it has completely run out of space in its hive cavity. This allows the halved colony that’s left behind to rebuild its numbers.

The second form of natural reproduction is on an individual level, allowing the bees to raise a new queen when they choose and allowing that queen to freely mate with local drones. A honeybee colony may decide to raise a new queen because the existing queen is old, sick or injured, or laying poorly. When this happens the bees will change the diet of a chosen egg or eggs to create potential new queens.

Allowing bees to swarm and/or raise their own queens means that the hive itself chooses the next queen. They choose the timing of when she is produced and, importantly, her genetics. In the process of conventional ‘re-queening’, a commercially produced queen bee is typically mail-ordered and then added to the hive. This queen will usually be bred to focus on various traits – e.g. golden colour, quietness and honey production, traits favoured by commercial beekeepers. In a natural beekeeping system, however, there are other important traits that are valued in a queen and the genetics that she passes on – local disease resistance, strong comb-building abilities, strong foraging and successful swarming abilities, to name just a few. Natural, locally adapted genetics are vital to ongoing colony health. The bees know what they need. Let them decide and reproduce accordingly.

Natural reproduction is important not just for individual colonies but also for the ‘super-super-organism’ that is the community of bees in a given area, all interacting and swapping locally adapted, resilient genetics to ensure long-term colony health for all.

Natural food: honey and pollen

Bees eat honey and pollen. These are both food and medicine to them, and represent a complete diet throughout an adult bee’s life.

The thousands of species of beneficial microflora found in both honey and bee bread are largely a result of the honey-making process. As the bees eat and regurgitate the nectar many times between its arrival at the hive and its eventual packing into a cell, layers and layers of microflora are introduced. By the time the nectar becomes honey, it is a serious probiotic powerhouse and the perfect food for bees.

The pollen that bees collect in baskets on their legs from millions of flowers is similarly processed inside the hive, becoming ‘bee bread’. This is stored in cells both to feed baby bees and to provide protein for adult bees as well. It’s another dense food and medicine for the bees, containing many species of microflora.

When you understand what honey means to bees, it’s pretty easy to see why it’s so important to ensure they have the food they need, especially through cold winter months, for optimal colony health. Beekeeping practices that harvest too much of the honey from hives over the summer create a situation where the bees do not have enough stored food to make it through the winter. It is then common to feed the bees on sugar water. It’s a bit like us living on white bread alone for six months. Instead of a wholesome, balanced diet, sugar water provides empty carbohydrates with none of the probiotics or medicinal aspects of honey that bees need, especially when they are stressed, cold or sick.

In natural beekeeping it’s essential to ensure the bees have enough honey stores at all times. In a crisis, feeding starving bees clean honey, preferably in the form of honeycomb and always from a disease-free hive, is the best substitute for their own honey stores.

Since a bee colony is a warmth organism, maintaining the colony’s internal heat is crucial. Bees are not warm-blooded by themselves, so they create this collective heat through friction. Heater bees buzz their bodies at a frenzied rate, generating heat for the benefit of the colony and the health of both brood and adults. Along with the ‘nest scent’ (the environment of pheromones actively used for communication within the hive), maintaining this core temperature is intrinsic to colony health and disease suppression. Limiting the times you open the hive from the top to two to three times per season is a big help in retaining this heat and scent.

Another way to check on the bees throughout the season is to observe the entrance activity. Bees bringing in pollen means the queen is laying well. Bees flying in low and crashing onto the bottom board (or below it, and crawling up) can mean that there is plenty of nectar around and the bees are coming back fuller than full. Bees landing light on the bottom board can mean that nectar foraging is sparse. Different smells also indicate different things. Read the signs (and good books on the subject) and you will learn a lot from what happens at the hive entrance.

Nadiring is yet another way to minimise intervention. Until a hive is many boxes high, getting a friend to help raise the hive as a whole and slip a box underneath is a great low-intervention way to add space to the hive without opening it up.

A box of warré comb - bee built!

Natural management

In an age where bees on many continents are routinely dosed with chemical treatments, either to control existing disease or in anticipation of infection, the idea of natural management flies in the face of much conventional beekeeping practice. However, a dedicated focus on good hive management, natural husbandry and disease prevention are key to healthy bees, in the same way that these techniques are key to growing healthy food or keeping healthy animals.

The principles outlined above, particularly ensuring natural comb renewal and natural reproduction, have been shown to greatly lessen bee colony diseases over time. With lots of research and careful observation, good management and prevention can be your key tools for hive health…”

The above is an extract from the Natural Beekeeping chapter of our new book Milkwood – real skills for down to earth living.

If you’re keen to learn more about stewarding bees (or foraging seaweed, growing tomatoes, finding wild food or mushroom growing), you can buy a signed copy from us or pick up a copy at your local bookshop.

Also, this Spring we have two introductory courses to Natural Beekeeping happening with Tim Malfroy in Bathurst, NSW! On October 20th and also 21st. Details for those courses are here.